Tullabrack Wind Farm

The Tullabrack Wind Farm is located near Kilrush in West County Clare, Ireland and it consists of six Enercon turbines. The site is characterised by variable peat depths and changing bedrock elevations that resulted in a range of different foundation designs being required. GDG was originally requested by Enercon to undertake the conceptual foundation design of the foundations, roads and hard stands. GDG was subsequently hired by the contractor on site, L&M Keating, to undertake the detailed design of the access roads, crane platforms and associated enabling works.

Scope of Work:

GDG was originally commissioned by ENERCON to review the factual site investigation information for the proposed wind farm in County Clare and to undertake the l design of the turbine foundations. The GDG scope of work included:

Reviewing the Factual Data and Developing Interpretive Reports

Determining the soil and rock design properties

Completing detailed design for the six bases, which included compression pile bases, buoyant and non-bouyant foundations

GDG subsequently designed several road and infrastructure related items including the floating access roads on peat, culverts, drainage, crane platforms, etc. The deliverables of this work included the section 50 application for the OPW. The design included developing full construction drawings for the contractor and validation of the construction using a combination of field monitoring, lab testing and application of the observational method.

The construction was particularly challenging due to the variable nature of the peat deposits and tight site constraints.